Still a criminally under-appreciated album and were it not for the blogoshere it would be even more so. I’ve been sitting on this one for a long long time without sharing it, waiting for stars to align perfectly for me to write something inspired about this exhilarating album, and then I remembered that it made an appearance on the Orgy In Rhythm blog a few years back. The write-up there is so well-down it would superfluous to add much to it. I will only add that, since the post at Orgy, it has apparently been reissued on CD although I haven’t personally seen a copy.

As you can see below, he also states that he forked out the cash for a pricey Japanese vinyl pressing. The links are dead there so I can’t make any comparisons, but I think my rip — made from a recent reissue, year unknown, on inferior-quality vinyl — still sounds pretty nice. There is surface noise on some of the atmospheric parts of Broken Home, for example, that has been there since I tore the plastic off the LP jacket – this is NOT virgin , but it was also priced accordingly. And generally I think the sound is pretty warm and full. I hope you enjoy and encourage people to leave comments about what you think.

From Orgy in Rhythm, 2006

Eddie Palmieri’s supergroup Harlem River Drive was the first group to really merge black and Latin styles and musicians, resulting in a free-form brew of salsa, funk, soul, jazz, and fusion. Though it was led by pianist Palmieri, the group also included excellent players from both the Latin community (his brother Charlie, Victor Venegas, Andy GonZalez) and the black world (Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, Ronnie Cuber). Named as an ironic reference to the New York City street which allowed predominantly suburban drivers to bypass East Harlem entirely on their way to lower Manhattan, Harlem River Drive released their groundbreaking debut album in 1970 on Roulette, including Latin and underground club hits like the title track and “Seeds of Life.” Unfortunately, Harlem River Drive was their only album, though the group did appear co-billed on Eddie Palmieri’s two-part 1972 release, Live at Sing Sing, Vols. 1-2.
The reason this record is “legendary” is because it marks the first recorded performances, in 1970, of Eddie and Charlie Palmieri as bandleaders. The reason it should be a near mythical recording (it has never been available in the U.S. on CD, and was long out of print on LP before CDs made the scene), is for its musical quality and innovation. The Palmieris formed a band of themselves, a couple of Latinos that included Andy Gonzales, jazz-funk great — even then — Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, and some white guys and taught them how to play a music that was equal parts Cuban mambo, American soul via Stax/Volt, blues, Funkadelic-style rock, pop-jazz, and harmonic and instrumental arrangements every bit as sophisticated as Burt Bacharach’s or Henry Mancini’s or even Stan Kenton’s. One can hear in “Harlem River Drive (Theme)” and “Idle Hands” a sound akin to War’s on World Is a Ghetto. Guess where War got it? “If (We Had Peace)” was even a model for Lee Oskar’s “City, Country, City.” And as much as War modeled their later sound on this one record, as great as they were, they never reached this peak artistically. But there’s so much here: the amazing vocals (Jimmy Norman was in this band), the multi-dimensional percussion section, the tight, brass-heavy horn section, and the spaced-out guitar and keyboard work (give a listen to “Broken Home”) where vocal lines trade with a soprano saxophone and a guitar as snaky keyboards create their own mystical effect. One can bet that Chick Corea heard in Eddie’s piano playing a stylistic possibility for Return to Forever’s Light As a Feather and Romantic Warrior albums. The band seems endless, as if there are dozens of musicians playing seamlessly together live — dig the percussion styling of Manny Oquendo on the cowbell and conga and the choral work of Marilyn Hirscher and Allan Taylor behind Norman. Harlem River Drive is a classic because after 30-plus years, it still sounds as if listeners are the ones catching up to it.

24 Comments

I remember reading about this album in a magazine that I don't remember the name.I would dig for records dreaming to find Harlem River Drive and no luck but thanks to your hard work,I get to have a great quality copy but I still hope to find a vinyl copy at a decent price. Thank you for your hard work!!

I only recently stumbled across this one in a little record fair, got it for a song and since this has never left the platter, blowing away many heads when I drop the extended break on 'Idle Hands'. This is an atom bomb on the floor… and then there's the rest of the album

Thanks for sharing Flabber, even re-issued this is hard to find, having a good digital is very handy.

Without a doubt this is easily in my top 5 funk LP's of all time, and I have a stack of them!

Wow!!! Guess I learned somethin' today… I'd never heard of these guys before… I can certainly see how this would inspire Chick Corea & other artists of sound… For me this is definitely a missing piece of the puzzle… one I'm glad I found… it brings more continuity to art, music, cinema… & the world. Thanks so much for posting this!

hi, just to let u know: 'vibes' doesn't match with the pw requested for the first flac file, same pb on unrar and stuffitall mp3 links are dead, now waiting to dwnld the heavier flac filethanks anyway for trying to share this lp, I'm currently listening to my own minty original copy and will play it anyway in my forthcoming radio broadcast because I only play dope recordsand RIP Johnny NormanT

Hey T, this has been downloaded hundreds of times and this is the first complaint that the password doesn't work. So, logic says the problem is at your end. BTW it has to be typed, and not cut and pasted, into many un-rar'ing programs.

its 320, and no password. FLAC updates to follow later today. Incidentally I got hold of the CD version and it probably sounds better than this reissue-of-questionable-providence on vinyl. BUt I'm still holding out for an original LP

There's in FLAC from cd in a torrent, this is the magnet link. magnet:?xt=urn:btih:E9E7ED6B72BC1E13D75575E8FC55B43417B4CA3F&dn=Eddie%20Palmieri%20-%20Harlem%20River%20Drive%20%281971%2c%20Stateside%20Rec.%29&tr=http%3a%2f%2fbt4.rutracker.org%2fann%3fuk%3dtCvcNhv12Q&tr=http%3a%2f%2fretracker.local%2fannounce